


Four o'clock AM

by Souja



Category: BIRDMEN - 田辺イエロウ | Tanabe Yellow
Genre: (?), Family, General, Passive-aggression, Writing practice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-14
Updated: 2016-09-14
Packaged: 2018-08-15 01:27:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8036860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Souja/pseuds/Souja
Summary: In which mama Karasuma and Eishi talk over omelettes.





	Four o'clock AM

.Four AM.

\--

_Articulation is usually key. Usually._

\--

 

 

_Oh shit._

 

Is what he would've liked to say if the words, the cowards, hadn't gotten lodged in his throat. Maybe he’d have spiced it up with an adjective? _Fucking_ shit? _Holy_ shit?

 

I-did-not-sign-up-for-this shit?

 

Whatever the case for shit-enhancers, his words surrendered him to the quiet, which meant there would be no adjectives or nouns to punctuate the steadily rising awkward silence. In the minute calls of ‘ _Sorry-mum-needa-use-the-washroom’_ while he snuck off and de-transformed seemed unlikely as well, given the position of his current offender at the mouth of his doorway and staring _directly at him_.

 

She was still in her scrubs and very much in the way. He had to face the music, and at the moment the music was palming at her temples and squinting as her eyes adjusted to the orange glow of the newly onned bedroom light. Eishi winced as his mother drew a breath in, and then another as if for safe keeping. He mandated that the third breath, though, was a bit unnecessary.

 

Likely she had just returned home from her shift and, in a rare stroke of wisdom best described as inconvenient, decided to check on him. And he, for his part, had appeared in his windowsill clad entirely in black gunk and twigs.

 

The majority of his weight was on his small reading desk. The Journal, cautiously hidden in plain sight, had taken residence under his right knee. His other leg protested as it hung akimbo out the open window and a more rational part of his mind reasoned that it'd be best to pull it in. It was also this part of his mind that registered— _oh, yeah, still transformed, so there's that to worry about. Stamina, buddy, remember? We’re low on it?_

 

A separate, more optimistic part that sounded suspiciously like Kamoda tittered conspiracies of dreams and false-realities. But when his foot—still taloned in dark wing-mass—nicked the threshold of the window and a low groan crowed out his throat, the voice was silenced and pushed away.

 

The Karasuma matriarch— just 'Mother' to him on most days—balanced a mug in one hand, while the other was crooked over her mouth in a manner almost contemplative. She watched with such quiet that if not for the suffocating tension in the room and the confused daggers she was glaring, Eishi might've succumbed to the banished Kamoda-esque thoughts and called it a bad dream.

 

“I...I'm home?” he offered as soon as all body parts, both legs included, nuzzled into his bedroom.

 

She nodded. “Welcome back.”

 

\--

 

Oh.

 

Shit.

 

Is what he wanted to say, but the discomfort of the situation, the fact that he'd never quite figured out a comfortable way to sit while transformed that didn't involve shifting the wing-mass form, and his muscles screaming _let me sleep damn you_ , made it hard to verbalize. His mother busied herself in the kitchen, echoes of avoidance tactics he'd seen many times when he was younger and less prone to pointing it out. Pots clanged haphazardly, the sound reverberating in his ears and along the tips of his wings.

 

Forgoing prayer, he hoped instead for the calm level-headedness that periodically overcame him since his evolution to dissolve the situation so he could rest his aching _everything_ and get some shut-eye _._ But it seemed awkward tension overrode awkward birdmen tendencies; whatever advantage he might've garnered abandoned him along with coherent speech. A sarcastic bite reminded him to pen _that_ finding into the Journal.

 

The worse-than-worst case scenario played out in front of him, and Eishi struggled not to fret. He knew she wouldn't scream—he hadn't heard her raise her voice at anyone other than his father— but his mother's’ silence was an ill-boding rarity. Of all the Wednesdays-at-4-am for her to choose to come home early, for _him_ to opt to de-transform in the comfort of his room, why had it been this one? _Rookie move, Eishi_ , mused a part of him that imitated Sagisawa, _Rookie move_.

 

Which made him question if this new introduction of voices in his head that sounded like his clubmates would be a running trend. Who was next, Takayama? At what point would an Umino-voice join the fray?

 

_Would the rest of the club go through this? Did they need drills regarding possible post-meeting run-ins with family? How did one go about telling their parent about newfound probably-scientific abilities? Would he have to cut off a pinkie and watch it grow back to prove it to her? Did limb damage even heal? He'd healed from having been impaled, sure, but would he be forever pinkie-less if it came to it?_

 

The train of thought powered along with self-sustaining locomotion, gaining speed with every _‘But what even do I use my pinkie for?’_ and _'What other body parts can’t I regenerate? My eyes, can I regenerate my eyes?’_ that crossed Eishi’s mind. It braked only for the sound of a plate clattering at the base of his seat. He wasn't given an answer, though, and he chided himself for the flutter of his heart that had followed the noise. To his disappointment, it was just a regular omelette lacking in (useful) solutions. Opposite him, his mother had an identical platter and began to cut into it with deft knife strokes.

 

Though he didn’t count his mother as the poison-and-run type, Eishi eyed the egg dish suspiciously, poking experimentally at the melted cheese atop it before taking a cautionary bite. He chewed. Well, at least it wasn’t a rapidly acting poison. Between slightly charred eggs and death by figurative avoided elephant, it wasn’t so bad an option.

 

“So... _this_ is what you do in Bird Club?”

 

The sudden descent of said elephant _crushed him_ and Eishi choked. He hacked, once, twice, trying to get egg and cheddar out of his windpipe, before finally downing the liquid in a small glass cup he'd procured earlier. His mother stared, patiently, as if he was throwing a small tantrum. He coughed once more for good measure, a small amount of undigested egg splattering on the table.

 

“Gross,” his mother commented, ever observant.

 

Eishi righted his posture, returning cup, cutlery, and plate alike to their respective positions before regarding his mother, a proper response eluding him. _Yes._ He might answer. _And every ten days the sky shits some kind of psyche-based monstrosity. I beat up brain-farts, essentially. Kamoda, too. What? No, you don’t need to call a doctor, we have one of those already. He’s a bit of a stalker, though. You know how it is._

 

And then he and the Bird Club would be added to the slew of cuckoo’s and wannabe’s that had emerged following the arrival of the “New York Birdman”. He felt his blood pressure spike at the thought. The last thing they needed was another rando riding on their coattails, even if said rando was he himself.

 

“Yes?” He stated, with none of the certainty he wanted the statement to have, “kind of.”

 

His mother shifted her weight to the balls of her elbow, her chin resting on her palms. For a fraction of a moment it seemed as though her attention was entirely on him, possibly a candidate for the strangest part of the evening’s happenings. Eishi waved away the revelation and continued to speak.

 

“We,” _fly through the night like idiots, “_ help people.”

 

And he blinked. Yeah, that was true. He thought of Takayama and Kamoda, of Sagisawa and Umino. They helped people. They were the good guys. Yeah. He had to still his wings to stop them from fluttering violently, there was a vase nearby his seat he doubted he wanted to be cleaning shards of, but the flushed warmth was still present and radiated through his body.

After some moments, his mother spoke. _“Oh ,”_   she responded curtly, and _there_ it was; the placating disbelief, the _you're entirely full of shit, dear_ patience. Eishi almost frowned, but opted instead to avert his eyes to the blank television screen, “In nylons?”

 

He looked down at his wing-mass skinsuit. Really? He thought it looked more like spandex. “It’s the uniform,” he retorted, “based on--”

 

“The Birdman?” she drawled, interrupting his spiel. Her tone said she was no stranger to the name nor the context.  

 

Eishi pretended not to hear the troubled sigh that followed, ignored the bored lack of tonation, but nodded nonetheless. His mother shifted her weight to only one hand, rubbing the rim of her mug absently with the thumb of the other.

“I’m shocked. You always seemed the unfashionable type, Eishi.”

 

 _I was doing it before it was a fashion statement!_ He wanted to snap back, but instead looked away and ignored the obvious retort. “Things aren’t always what they seem,” he said with equal boredom.

 

Mother hummed and Eishi focused on a dark spot on the wall.

 

Silent seconds dripped like molasses between them, and Eishi wondered idly how long it would be before his transformation flipped him the bird and went kaput. He could deal with supposed-nylons, but suddenly and violently becoming butt naked wasn’t exactly something he wished to explain under most circumstances.

 

 _See, Takayama,_ he mused, carefully avoiding actually contacting the boy again, _this_ _is why underwear is a must._

 

He was in the middle of a thought regarding the use of wing mass pockets to hold spare clothing, when his mother muttered under her breath. Processing it took a moment, and time slowed to a clumsy halt. Maybe it was shock that rendered it inaudible even with the aid of the superior hearing. It was malicious and petty, but sadly, not entirely unexpected.

 

_“You’re always getting into useless things recently.”_

 

Wow.

 

Just, wow.

 

He’d heard some people moved fast, but to go from omelettes to nylons to cheap shots in less than an hour was remarkable, even for her. To make matters worse, she _still_ appeared bored. As if she were expecting more than just finding out her son snuck out to play hero during the night. He wondered if he should interject that he’d almost died on more than one occasion, or that they’d needed to talk Sagisawa through a panic attack, or that Kamoda had been poisoned by an organization almost as virulent as she. Spice up the story a little with a pinch of truth.

 

But talking seemed a lost cause, and Eishi allowed his mouth to close, because the _shit_ he would've said didn't match the situation. Though, if he considered it, he doubted anyone would blame him.

 

“It’s not useless.” he said instead before rising and collecting the forgotten dishes. It was awkward to walk on the talons, made worse by close spaces and wings that dragged behind him, but he could see the beauty in his mother’s tactic now. The _hiss_ of the faucet and the _clank_ of dirty dishes did wonders on his nerves.

 

His mother scoffed behind him, “So what is it, then? Will,” she gestured roughly at his body, “Nylon bodysuits, get you a good job?”

 

 _Spandex,_ he corrected mentally.  

 

“No, mother, but neither will your complaints.”

 

He turned from the dishware, now clean and stacked and orderly, in time to see her shake her head in disbelief, “I’m preparing you for a _good_ _future_. If you want to go frolicking and ruin your life with--with--the _Birdman,_ ” her gesture clipped the edge of the dish rack, and a metal spoon clattered to the floor, somehow landing with a terrible booming noise, “I won’t let you.”

 

 _You couldn’t stop me if you tried,_ sang a voice he didn’t recognize.

 

“If it’s _my_ future you’re worried about, you really needn’t be.”

 

And the room bristled with a feeling he did not like, but seemed to cloy to his skin like an adhesive. Eishi bent towards the fallen utensil just as his mother reached down and grasped it. A breath of their skin touched, her thumb on his pointer, for an ephemeral moment, but he felt it.

 

 _Fear. Fear. Annoyance. Worry. Cooled anger. Apprehension--_  

 

The feelings crawled across his skin, dark and muddy in a vortex-like flux. And then they dispersed into a dull throb reminiscent of human pity. Unfazed, or perhaps very good at hiding, his mother took the spoon away and placed it in its respective drawer. 

 

“I don’t want you wasting your life looking for some trending myth.” she sighed, closing the drawer with a light _click_.

 

Eishi exhaled, and this time he welcomed the comment dancing on his tongue. He gestured to his body, his arms and his feet, “As if,” he said, illuminated by a white, energy-efficient glow, “I’m my _own_ Birdman.”

 

\--

 

 

He felt the slight burn of fatigue on his muscles, though he was sure when he'd finally given in to sleep that they’d be rested and well by the time he actually descended for breakfast. At the moment, though, he was confined to his bed by warm lethargy. The sun bathed his room in a heavy glow, and the prospect of a few more moments of rest was absolutely tantalizing.

 

**_Kamoda wants to know if you finished the math assignment._ **

 

Evidently, Takayama knew nothing of proper rousing etiquette. Likely he’d been up for hours already, awakened at some awful, single digit hour by a call for help or a bizarre internal clock.

 

Eishi rolled to his side and covered his face with his pillow, halfheartedly ignoring Takayama’s tweet. Outside his window, birds chirped their morning greetings. In his head, Takayma relayed Kamoda’s pleas in intervals of two.

 

 _Yeah, I did,_ he tweeted back finally, when the pleas had become incoherent and bordered on exposing _certain_  secrets that deserved to remain as such because _it was most certainly not his fault that he cried during that movie, Kamoda._

 

 _But he can’t copy._ He added. Call it a spirit of vengeance combined with good intentions. If he defaulted here, there'd be no reason he couldn't default elsewhere.

 

A moment passed without a response.

 

 **_He says he’ll pay you_ ** _._

 

 **He’s lying.** Sagisawa confirmed. His voice was thick with sleep, the words slightly slurred as his mind began to unthaw from its sleep-induced haze.

 

 

 **_He says not to rat him out, Sagisawa._ **  

 

Sagisawa snickered in the back of his mind, and Eishi realised it was unlikely he would be returning to sleep. He propped himself up and reached instinctively for the idle glasses case by his bedside before remembering he didn’t need it anymore. Still weird, that was.

 

He searched for his uniform and laid it out flat on his bed before stretching and feeling for a satisfying _pop_ from each of his joints. His body hummed, pleased, and Eishi ambled sleepily to the bathroom, eyes heavy and half lidded.

 

**_He says he’ll do your homework for a week._ **

 

Eishi snorted as he ran a hand through his hair. _We’re not even in the same class._

 

**_He says it makes no difference._ **

 

Eishi placed down his toothbrush and spat out the mint foam. _Tell him to do it himself._

 

Takayama stopped tweeting after that, and Eishi took his time getting dressed. He reviewed the night's discussion with a healthy dosage of disconnect. He’d been up till five am. _Five_. Finally, an explanation for the lingering muscle fatigue.

 

Fully dressed, he cascaded down the stairs. In the kitchen a breakfast, western, of eggs and toast awaited him. Mother regarded him from the opposite side of the table with a nod and a lazy “Good morning.”

 

Eishi reciprocated the greeting between bites of toast.

 

The TV broadcasted news of _this_ issue and _that_ global disaster, along with a segment adorably dubbed “Birdbrained” that highlighted the newest Birdman mockery. The current segment focused on a little boy’s pet, “Birdrat”, which was essentially a rat with wings. A bat. The little boy had a bat for a pet. What was the world coming to?

 

His mind wandered over his itinerary as he finished his breakfast, the TV more or less drowning into a garbled variety of nonsense. He almost didn’t hear it when his mother questioned, “So, club activities today?”

 

He hummed, a faint glimmer of suspicion clouding his thoughts. The next blackout was… Friday? Probably? It would be hard to tell with the faux Birdmen arising. Though unlikely, a true one in the mix it would disrupt the already fragile schedule, shifting it this way and that. It could be tonight, tomorrow night, or next week for all he knew.

 

Eishi shrugged, “Yeah. Maybe.”

 

“Hm.” She turned back to her eggs, disregarding the answer as she switched to a new topic. “I’m making stir fry for dinner tonight, but I’ll be home late,” there was a beat where she was silent, “Maybe we’ll end up eating it together.”  

 

 _Ouch_ , he remarked mentally, _still on that?_ He took it as his signal to exit the conversation and picked his bag from where it lay discarded. At the door he turned, and with a grin, he responded, “Perhaps.”

 

\--

 

Shortly after he left the home, he tweeted Sagisawa a reminder to make contingency plans for if unwanted parties ever discovered their existence.

 

The rest of his day continued unhindered, and he ate the stir fry in the company of energy efficient lights.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Believe it or not, this was a comedy at one point.


End file.
